2024 NATIONAL MEDAL
for Museum and Library Service Finalist

Adults

Time Makes You Bolder

In my seventies, apprehensive, determined to go into Home Depot, not leave until I got everything on my list.
Miles later I pushed cart into checkout lane.
"I think if I shall ever die, it will be in a Home Depot!"
Alarmed, cashier replied, "Oh, please, don't die here. I don't want to find you. Oh, please!"
"You don't have to worry about that, you can't find a darn thing in this place!"

A Day I Will Not Forget

I was eating lunch at my desk. I heard and felt a loud rumble. Had a transformer blown up? There was smoke and we evacuated. We put scarves or ripped shirt sleeves around our soot-covered faces. It was both scary, yet calm. The lights went out. We walked down 86 floors in the dark. Six people died that day. The rest were safe. I don’t like the dark anymore.